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Presence & ProtocolAn independent guide to Jabber and XMPP

Layer 05 · Standards

Standards: how a XEP becomes something you can rely on

The XSF publishes its own process document. Here is what Experimental, Stable and Final really mean, and which extensions carry the features people expect.

A whiteboard covered in a numbered process diagram, marker still in hand.

The core of XMPP is frozen in RFCs. Everything added since arrives as a numbered extension published by the XMPP Standards Foundation, and each one carries a status that says how much you should rely on it. This layer explains how that process works, what the statuses mean in practice, and takes two live examples, group chat and end to end encryption, where reading the status line changes the decision you make.

In this layer

  1. A marker pen resting on the empty tray of a blank whiteboard in a quiet, well lit meeting room.

    How a XEP becomes a standard

    The number on an extension tells you nothing. The status line above it tells you almost everything.

  2. An empty meeting room with chairs pulled around a table and a screen showing a blank chat window.

    MUC and MIX: two answers to group chat

    Group chat was bolted on twice, twenty years apart, and the second attempt starts from a different idea of who a member is.

  3. Two identical brass keys on a dark cloth, one slightly out of focus behind the other.

    OMEMO and end to end encryption

    Transport encryption protects the hops. End to end encryption protects the message. They are not the same promise.

Every essay in this layer is written against the reference page on the three stanza types, and two neighbouring layers extend it: Protocol and History.